Porte worth watching, but Aussies will struggle to get into yellow jersey contention in this year's Tour de France

AS much as Australia will "yell for Cadel" over the three weeks of the Tour, the 2011 winner faces a big challenge to return to the top step of the podium.

The route for the 100th edition is tough… very tough, even by Tour de France standards, with some early medium mountain stages, four mountain top stage finishes, two individual and one team time trial and a sadistic double ascent of Alpe d’Huez on stage 18.

So the top contenders must climb like mountain goats, have a big enough engine to deal with the time trials and have the skills to stay up right for 21 stages across 3403km.

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Chris Froome (Team Sky)

The Kenyan-born, South African-raised, British rider finished second last year and looked like he could have dropped his team leader and eventual winner Bradley Wiggins on more than one occasion, including the day he won stage seven.

Whether or not Wiggins agreed not to challenge for leadership of Team Sky this year remains unclear, but the defending champ won’t be back and on the basis of exceptional lead-up form, including wins at the Tour of Oman, Criterium International, Tour of Romandie and Criterium du Dauphine, the 28-year old is the red-hot favourite.

He’ll have Tasmania's Richie Porte as a key lieutenant and will be very, very hard to beat.

Alberto Contador (Team Saxo-Tinkoff)

The 2007 and 2009 winner, Contador missed the 2012 Tour after a little holiday caused by (according to Alberto) some contaminated beef at a hotel restaurant during the 2010 Tour, which he "won" but later relinquished when the golden fleece was stripped from him (along with the 2011 Giro d’Italia title).

He returned to win the 2012 Vuelta a Espana, so the controversial figure can never be discounted.

A brilliant climber who has improved his time-trialling, Contador's lead-up form has been mixed so the early medium mountain stages and climbs before the first rest day will be telling as to his overall chances of a third victory.

This year’s route will suit him as he LOVES the mountains and, at his best, is rarely shaded in the time trials by anyone other than the TT specialists.

He does find ways to fall off the bike on days when he should just keep out of trouble, something he’ll be looking to avoid in 2013.

Richie Porte (Team Sky)

More than one bookmaker has the Tasmanian as the third favourite in just his third Tour, behind Froome and Contador… and ahead of Cadel Evans.

Not surprisingly, the former triathlete wasn’t one of the seven possible winners teammate Froome nominated after his Dauphine win. But if something should happen to Froome, Porte is a chance.

Since his Grand Tour debut where he won the best young rider classification at the 2010 Giro d’Italia after wearing the maglia rosa for three days, he has continued to develop into a Grand Tour contender.

If you need a pointer to form, Porte’s effort on the final stage of the Dauphine, where he and Froome rode clear of the field, with only American Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) able to follow, shows he has great legs.

If Froome falters, Porte will pounce.

Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha)

Along with Alejandro Valverde, Rodriquez is the sort of rider veteran Tour de France commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen hope will be front and centre for the three weeks, just so they can roll his name off their tongues every few minutes.

Once Phil and Paul mention for the 73rd time that his nickname in the peloton is "Purito", Spanish for little cigar because earlier in his career he used to make light of difficult climbs by passing his teammates with a hand gesture to suggest he was doing it easy, as if smoking a cigar, he’ll have pub fans on board.

The 34-year-old has some impressive results in Grand Tours including 10 stage wins, a second in last year’s Giro, two third-place finishes at the Vuelta, along with classic wins at Fleche Wallonne and the Giro di Lombardia.

The Spaniard is a super climber but not so super time-trialler, which is a major problem.

Cadel Evans (BMC)

He’s Australian and we love him, so he has to be in the top five, but to be honest, there’s a question mark.

How dare we say such a thing about the only Australian to win the most coveted race in cycling... but it’s interesting to note that in the oracle of cycling Ride’s group of 26 tipsters, only SBS’s Mike Tomalaris had Cadel slated for victory.

Robbie McEwen, Simon Gerrans and Richie Porte had him outside the top five and most of the European journalists couldn’t find a spot for him either.

That said, one thing we know about Cadel is that he’ll bust his guts trying to stay in contention.

He finished third at the Giro in May to become the first and only Australia to finish on the podium at each Grand Tour.

At 34 and five months he was the second-oldest winner ever; at 36 and five months he’ll be the oldest ever if he ends up in yellow in Paris.

It’s hard to see him beating Froome or Contador and even Porte, but who cares. We’ll still "yell for Cadel" all the way to Paris.

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